Oct 14, 2010

Esoterica

The girl became the talk of her village when she allegedly vanished on several occasions, only to be found in odd places like inside a cement mixer and a cemetery.

The parents of Siti Balqis Mohd Nor, 22, were relieved with the success of the two bomoh and hoped their life would return to normal as the djinns were said to be behind the woman's mysterious disappearances.

Hundreds of residents flocked to the home of Siti Balqis when they heard that the "culprits" had been captured and imprisoned in special containers.

Curious onlookers jostled to take photos and video footage of the containers and the djinns said to be inside.

Self-improvement guru James Arthur Ray is scheduled to go on trial in February on manslaughter charges prompted by a sweat lodge ceremony held near Sedona a year ago.

The trial originally was to start at the end of August in Yavapai County Superior Court. But the judge running Ray's case was assigned to replace a colleague who fell ill during a high-profile murder trial, and Ray's trial was put on hold.

Druidry has been recognised as an official religion in Britain for the first time, thousands of years after its adherents first worshipped in the country.

The Druid Network has been given charitable status by the Charity Commission for England and Wales, the quango that decides what counts as a genuine faith as well as regulating fundraising bodies.

It guarantees the modern group, set up in 2003, valuable tax breaks but also grants the ancient religion equal status to more mainstream denominations. This could mean that Druids, the priestly caste in Celtic societies across Europe, are categorised separately in official surveys of religious believers.

In recent years, Catholic bishops have used their moral influence and deep pockets to push for bans on same-sex unions in states from California to Maine.

But a new corps of increasingly vocal Catholics is urging a "mutiny" against the hierarchy, in the words of one activist, particularly on gay marriage and related matters.

For example, on Sept. 14, Palacios and other advocates launched Catholics for Equality, a group that aims to persuade believers in the "movable middle" to defy the bishops and support civil rights for gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people.

"Do you not know, Asclepius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or, to speak more exactly, in Egypt all the operations of the powers which rule and work in heaven have been transferred to earth below? Nay, it should rather be said that the whole Kosmos dwells in this our land as in its sanctuary." - from the Hermetica